Introduction: Powerful countries maintain the effectiveness of those historical lies deemed essential for the preservation of the cognitive status quo. Just as the United States clings to the official fiction of the Warren Commission’s findings about President Kennedy’s assassination, the Federal Republic of Germany dutifully adheres to the fiction that Martin Bormann died in the ruins of Berlin during the closing days of World War II.

The power behind the throne during the Third Reich, Martin Bormann arranged for the secreting of Germany’s wealth in neutral countries and then presided over the resulting economic and political network in the postwar period. Dominating German political and economic life and playing a decisive role in the affairs of other countries (including and especially the United States), the network created by Bormann is literally an Underground Reich, perpetuated in Mafia-like fashion.

In response to investigations that revealed Bormann’s escape and postwar activities, the German government arranged for a DNA testing of the remains—supposedly of Bormann—that were found in Berlin in the 1970’s. The DNA tests were never independently verified and the remains that were supposed to be Bormann’s were disposed of in a secret location, precluding the possibility of future verification of the test. The corpses placed in the ruins of Berlin were, in fact, concentration camp inmates whose dental work was meticulously altered under the supervision of Dr. Hugo Blaschke, Hitler and Bormann’s personal dentist. The inmates’ dental work was made identical to Bormann’s, right down to the wear and aging of the oral architecture.

The inmates were then killed, and their remains buried in the rubble of Berlin. These corpses were the remains found—and tested—by the German government to “verify” Bormann’s supposed death in World War II! Most of the second half of the program is devoted to detailing the efforts of the powerful Thyssen family, German corporations and former Gestapo chief [and Bormann security director] Heinrich Mueller’s efforts at blocking investigation of the Bormann network and its associates. For more about the Bormann organization, see FTR#305, as well as reading Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile. To learn more about the Bush family’s involvement with the Bormann network, check out the declassified documents available on this website. Note that the leverage maintained by the Bormann network derives from its consummate economic power, termed by one banker as “the greatest concentration of money power under a single control in history.”

Program Highlights Include: The murders committed to cover up the existence of the Bormann network; the murders committed to cover-up the Bush family’s involvement with the Bormann network; former Gestapo chief Heinrich Mueller’s discrediting of writer Ladislas Farago; author Gerald Posner’s efforts at leading the media charge to discredit Farago; checks written by Martin Bormann on accounts in three demand accounts in New York banks in August of 1967, twenty-two years after he supposedly died.

1. Beginning with the gambit generated by Heinrich Mueller to obscure Bormann’s escape by planting a fake Bormann corpse in the ruins of Berlin for later discovery, the program notes that Mueller faked his own death. When his “grave” was opened after the war, it was found to contain three skeletons, none of which was Mueller’s. (In FTR#283, we examined indications that Mueller went to work for elements of U.S. intelligence at the end of World War II.) “ . . . Mueller had already initiated a strategy of deception to explain his own disappearance from prominent circles in Berlin. The week he slipped out of the German capital, his grieving family gathered for his ‘funeral.’ A coffin was borne to a cemetery where it was buried with appropriate ceremony. The grave was marked with a headstone bearing the words ‘Our Dear Daddy,’ Mueller’s name, his birthdate, and the date of his alleged death in Berlin in 1945. Several years following this incident, an editor of a German news magazine, acting on an informer’s tip generated by the master deceptionist Mueller himself, from South America, obtained a court order in 1963, and the grave was opened. When the coffin in question was unearthed and opened, the editor and the attending officials found three skeletons, none remotely matching Heinrich Mueller’s short and thick-set measurements, or his markedly prominent forehead. . . .”
(Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Manning; Copyright 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stuart Inc.; ISBN 0-8184-0309-8; pp. 179; see archived excerpt.)

2. Selecting two Sachsenhausen inmates who bore a physical resemblance to Bormann, Mueller arranged to have their dental work structured to look like Bormann’s. After their dental work had time to “age” appropriately, the two inmates were killed, and their corpses placed in the rubble of Berlin. These were the remains that were used for the DNA “test” that supposedly proved that Bormann was dead. “A deception plan for Bormann had been completed by Mueller in Berlin. Tops in police work and crafty beyond imagining, he provided for a matching skeleton and skull, complete with identical dental work, for future forensic experts to ponder over and to reach conclusions that suited his purpose. . . . When Heinrich Mueller visited Sachsenhausen he walked through the engraving, printing, and document areas looking for any inmates who might resemble Bormann. In one he noticed two individuals who did bear a resemblance in stature and facial structure to the Reichsleiter. He had them placed in separate confinement. Thereupon a special dental room was made ready for “treatment” of the two men. A party dentist was brought in to work over and over again on the mouth of each man, until his teeth, real and artificial, matched precisely the Reichsleiter’s. In April 1945, upon completion of these alterations, the two victimized men were brought to the Kurfuerstenstrasse building to be held until needed. Dr. Blaschke had advised Mueller to use live inmates to insure a believable aging process for dentures and gums; hence the need for several months of preparation. Exact dental fidelity was to play a major part in the identification of Hitler’s body by the invading Russians. It was to be of significance in Frankfurt twenty-eight years later, when the West German government staged a press conference to declare that they had ‘found Bormann’s skeleton proving he had died in Berlin’s freight yards May 1-2, 1945.’ Dr. Hugo Blaschke was the dentist who had served both Hitler and Bormann. . . . In Bormann’s case, the problem was more complex, more challenging. Yet under Mueller’s skillful guidance, two bodies were planted; their discovery was made possible when an SS man, acting on Mueller’s orders, leaked the information to a Stern magazine editor as part of a ploy to “prove” that Bormann had died in the Berlin freight yard. The stand-ins for Bormann were two unfortunates from Concentration Camp Sachsenhausen, who had been killed gently in the Gestapo basement secret chambers with cyanide spray blown from a cigarette lighter (a killing device used later by the KGB in 1957 and 1959 against Lev Rebet and Stephen Bandera, two leaders of the Ukrainian immigrants in Munich). At Gestapo headquarters, the night of April 30, the bodies were taken by a special SS team to the freight yards near the Weidendamm Bridge and buried not too deep beneath rubble in two different areas. The Gestapo squad then made a hurried retreat from Berlin, joining their leader, SS Senior General Heinrich Mueller, in Flensburg. The funeral and burial caper was to be a Mueller trademark throughout the years of searching for Martin Bormann. The Mossad was to point out that they have been witnesses over the years to the exhumation of six skeletons, two in Berlin and four in South America, purported to be that of Martin Bormann. All turned out to be those of others . . .”
(Ibid.; pp. 180-183; archived excerpt.)

3. Of primary interest here is the fact that the Bush family’s involvement with Nazi industry was profound. On August 10, 1944, SS General Dr. Scheid was briefing assembled industrialists and financiers on behalf of Bormann. One of the firms Scheid cited as a company that had been particularly useful to Germany was the Hamburg-Amerika Line. The Hamburg-Amerika Line was part of the Bush family’s business operations on behalf of the Third Reich. “Dr. Scheid also affirmed, ‘The ground must now be laid on the financial level for borrowing considerable sums from foreign countries after the war.’ As an example of the kind of support that had been most useful to Germany in the past, Dr. Scheid cited the fact that ‘patents for stainless steel belonged to the Chemical Foundation, Inc. New York, and the Krupp Company of Germany, jointly, and that of the United States Steel Corporation, Carnegie, Illinois, American Steel & Wire, National Tube, etc., were thereby under an obligation to work with the Krupp concern.’ He also cited the Zeiss Company, the Leica Company, and the Hamburg-Amerika line as typical firms that had been especially effective in protecting German interests abroad. He gave New York addresses to the twelve men.” (Ibid.; p. 25)

4. When the manager of the Dutch bank used by the Thyssens and their American business partners the Bushes attempted to alert the allies about the truth of the Thyssen family’s business affairs, he died under strange and precipitous circumstances. This passage and the one that follows are excerpted from FTR#
370, which further documents the relationship between the Bush family and the Thyssen interests. “In 1945, the former Dutch manager of the Rotterdam bank resumed control only to discover that he was sitting on a huge pile of hidden Nazi assets. In 1947, the manager threatened to inform Dutch authorities, and was immediately fired by the Thyssens. The somewhat naïve bank manager then fled to New York City where he intended to talk to Union Bank director Prescott Bush. As Gowen’s Dutch source recalled, the manager intended ‘to reveal [to Prescott Bush] the truth about Baron Heinrich and the Rotterdam Bank, [in order that] some or all of the Thyssen interests in the Thyssen Group might be seized and confiscated as German enemy property. ‘The manager’s body was found in New York two weeks later.”(“How the Bush Family Made its Fortune from the Nazis” by John Loftus; p. 4.)

5. A Dutch journalist also experienced a sudden bout of mortality when he attempted to unearth the truth about the Thyssen-Bornemisza empire, nearly fifty years after the death of the Dutch bank manager. “Similarly, in 1996, a Dutch journalist Eddy Roever went to London to interview the Baron, who was neighbors with Margaret Thatcher. Roever’s body was discovered two days later. Perhaps, Gowen remarked dryly, it was only a coincidence that both healthy men had died of heart attacks immediately after trying to uncover the truth about the Thyssens.” (Idem.)

6. Author Frank Brandenburg learned of the lethal nature of the Bormann organization’s retribution. When contacting a Wehrmacht veteran and German art expert named Georg Stein, Brandenburg carried a message from the Bormann network, which was expecting Stein’s assistance in locating the priceless Amber Room. (For more about the search for the Amber Room, see FTR#234.) Brandenburg did not carry Stein’s message back to the Bormann group. Stein was found murdered in a forest–two kitchen knives stuck in his naked corpse. “Frank stood up. ‘Thank you for your time,’ he said, ‘and the information you have given me. But I must categorically decline any active involvement on my part with the activities of Mariborsol or you. A year later, Georg Stein was found murdered in a forest near Munich, naked, stabbed to death with two table knives that were still stick in his body.’”(Quest: Searching for the Truth of Germany’s Nazi Past, Ib Melchior and Frank Brandenburg, Presidio Press, copyright 1990, ISBN 0-89141-397-9, p. 306.)

7. The Bormann network’s members are very aware of the deadly nature of the reciprocity that awaits anyone breaking the official silence surrounding Bormann’s escape and the faking of his “death” over the years. “ . . . Israeli agents who move too closely to these centers of power are eliminated. One such termination was Fritz Bauer, formerly attorney general for the State of Hesse in Frankfurt, a survivor of Auschwitz and the man who tipped off the Israeli Mossad about the presence of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, who was killed on orders of General Mueller. . . .Mueller’s ruthlessness even today is what deters Artur Axmann from altering his testimony that he saw Bormann lying dead on the roadway the night of their escape from the Fuehrerbunker, May 1-2, 1945. The story had been composed by Mueller. To this day, Axmann, the only so-called living witness to the ‘death’ of Bormann in Berlin, knows his life is in jeopardy if he reverses himself. General Mueller is thorough and has a long memory, and for a Nazi such as Axmann to go against Mueller’s original directive would make him a traitor; retribution would surely follow. When I questioned one SS man who had once worked closely with Martin Bormann in South America about the Axmann testimony, he said, ‘Axmann knows Bormann is in South America. I don’t know why he persists in lying about the fact.’ He thought a moment, then went on, ‘But perhaps he wants to go on living, which is reason enough.’ . . . ”Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile; pp. 289-90.)

8. Illustrating the difficulty of telling the truth about the Bormann network, the program relates the active frustration of Paul Manning’s literary crusade to write about the group. Time after time, interests associated with the Thyssens and/or other elements of the Bormann network directly interfered with Paul Manning’s publishing contracts. [Recall, in this context, that the Thyssen interests were heavily involved with the Bush family over several generations, as we saw in—among other programs—FTR#305.] When Paul Manning finally did get his book published by Lyle Stuart, Mr. Stuart had both of his legs broken the week of publication. (Excerpted from side “A” of FTR#152. The text, in turn, is excerpted from two articles written by Paul Manning himself, and published on August 24 and 25 of 1982 by the now-defunct periodical News World. The two-part series was titled “Publishing Conspiracy to Deep Six Bormann Book”.)

9. In addition to setting forth the blocking of Paul Manning’s writing about the Bormann network, the News World excerpts discuss Heinrich Mueller’s discrediting of author Ladislas Farago, the author of Aftermath, a 1974 book about Bormann’s escape to Latin America. Rather than have Farago killed, Mueller arranged for disinformation to be channeled to Farago. In turn, the resulting inaccuracies in his book were leaked to the New York Times, which then reported them and used the material to discredit Farago.

10. Excerpting FTR#134, the broadcast sheds more light on Mueller’s discrediting of Farago. Interestingly, and perhaps significantly, writer Gerald Posner was highly visible in the media attack on Farago’s credibility. Posner has achieved considerable notoriety in connection with his literary defenses of the official [and discredited] “long nut” theories of the assassinations of both President Kennedy and Martin Luther King. (The information about Mueller’s discrediting of Farago is excerpted from a letter written in 1981 to William Leonard, then the head of CBS news. Paul Manning’s letters to colleagues can be accessed in FTR#145. The material about Posner leading the media charge to discredit Farago comes from Unholy Alliance by Peter Levenda [published in softcover by Avon Books in 1995].)

11. At President Harry Truman’s request, the FBI began a postwar file on Martin Bormann. The file revealed that he had been banking under his own name in for some time. em>In August of 1967, he wrote three checks on demand accounts in New York City. Not bad for someone who supposedly died in 1945. “The file revealed that he had been banking under his own name from his office in Germany in Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires since 1941; that he held one joint account with the Argentinian dictator Juan Peron, and on August 4, 5 and 14, 1967, had written checks on demand accounts in first National City Bank (Overseas Division) of New York, The Chase Manhattan Bank, and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co., all cleared through Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires.”(Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile; pp. 205.)

12. The Bormann group’s enormous influence has led to an effective cover-up over the years. The following text passage encapsulates the nature of the forces that applied pressure to Manning and others, through a combination of political pressure, corporate influence and [when deemed necessary] deadly force or the threat of it. “. . .were he to emerge, it would embarrass the governments that assisted in his escape, the industrial and financial leaders who benefited from his acumen and transferred their capital to neutral nations in the closing days of World War II, and the businessmen of four continents who profited from the 750 corporations he established throughout the world as depositories of money, patents, bearer bonds, and shares in blue chip industries of the United States and Europe. . . When I penetrated the silence cloaking this story, after countless interviews and laborious research in German and American archives for revealing documents of World War II, I knew that the Bormann saga of flight capital and his escape to South America was really true. It had been covered up by an unparalleled manipulation of public opinion and the media. The closer I got to the truth, the more quiet attention I received from the forces surrounding and protecting Martin Bormann, and also from those who had a direct interest in halting my investigation. Over the period of years it took to research this book, I was the object of diligent observation by squads of Gestapo agents dispatched from South America by General ‘Gestapo’ Mulller, who directs all security matters for Martin Bormann, Nazi in exile, and his organization, the most remarkable business group anywhere in the secret world of today. Mueller’s interest in me, an American journalist, confirmed the truth of my many interviews and my ongoing investigation. . .There are also those in international government and business who have attempted to stop my forward movement on this investigation. In Germany, France, England, and the United States, too many leaders in government and finance still adhere to Winston Churchill’s statement to his Cabinet in 1943 ‘In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies’ . . .Oddly, I encountered less resistance from Martin Bormann and his aging peers than I did from the cover-up groups in West Germany, Paris, London, Washington, and Wall Street.” (Ibid.; pp. 11-12.)